There are many known techniques for the remote sensing of oil spills in a marine environment. Such methods operate in various parts of the electromagnetic spectra including passive and active methods many of which utilize expensive special design detector systems and depend on illumination geometry of the scene.
An example of an Airborne Scanner Image spectrometer is disclosed in a U.S. Patent of Prelat, U.S. Pat. No. 5,471,056. As disclosed an airborne multi-spectral sensor system utilizes real time acquisition of images in many narrow, continuous spectral bands, to generate hyper-spectral image data and in particular to image data sets which can be used individually or combined to get spectral profiles and emittance to identify ground targets.
As disclosed in the above-identified patent, an airborne sensor processing unit includes a first plurality of spectrometers forming a first continuous selectable band from 400 to 1140 nanometers, a second plurality of spectrometers forming a second continuous band from 1400 to 2500 nanometers and a thermal sensor array formed with two configurations with the first having at least six bands running from 8.40 to 11.70 μm and the second having at least seven bands from 8.35 to 11.45 μm. The three spectrometers are each connected to receive input from a single discriminator having a plurality of optical sensors of known type. These sensors provide optical imaging for a known field of view which at a given known altitude will cover a determinable width.
A second reference of Belov et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,417,228 discloses a device for detecting oil pollution on water surfaces. The method of detecting oil pollution on water surfaces includes the step of providing echo signals obtained from optical radiation of a clean water area two wavelengths and optically radiating an investigated water area at two wavelengths. The method also includes the step of obtaining echo signals from the optical radiation of the investigated water area at the two wavelengths and comparing the echo signals obtained form the radiation of the investigated area and two wavelengths with the echo signals obtained from the radiation of the clean water area then, based on the comparison, determining the presence or absence of an oil pollution in the investigated water area. The aforementioned patent also discloses a device for detecting oil pollution that includes means for optically radiating an investigated water area at two wavelengths and obtaining echo signals from the optical radiation of the investigated water area, means for comparing the echo signals obtained from the radiation of the investigated area at two wavelengths with the echo signals obtained form the radiation of the clean water surface area and means from determining the presence or absence of oil pollution in the investigated water area.
Notwithstanding the above, it is presently believed that there is a need and a potential commercial market for an airborne system for detecting oil spills and other contaminants on a water surface in accordance with the present invention. There should be a commercial market for such system because such systems utilize standard resolution band 1 and band 2 information from a moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer/MODIS or similar optical scanner facility including airborne units. Then due to the difference behavior of band 1 and band 2 after real-time processing a warning will be enabled to indicate an oil spill or some other contaminates on the sea surface. In addition, such systems can be used to identify and call immediate attention to areas where significant concentrations of oil or related contaminants are encountered.